Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

In an eventful week for the Hanford Site tank farms, unions issued a list of demand for better worker protection against chemical vapors and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) agreed to conduct a safety and health evaluation of the chemical vapors situation. On Monday, the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council (HAMTC) […]

The New Mexico Environment Department on Thursday joined the Energy Department and one of its contractors as a defendant in a lawsuit filed in May by the advocacy group Nuclear Watch New Mexico. The group’s lawsuit alleges the federal agency owes the state millions of dollars after it blew a 2015 deadline to clean up a large cache of Cold […]

Scientists at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina are calling for more research to understand why mercury is being produced in tributaries that flow into the Savannah River waterways and how the environment is impacted when that mercury discharges into the river itself. During a June 8 presentation to a committee of the SRS […]

Waste Control Specialists said this week the legacy nuclear waste it is baby-sitting for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory — including some from the problematic batch that leaked radiation into the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) — should remain in Texas for two years longer than the company’s current license allows. […]

The union representing federal workers at the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) in Washington, D.C., wants face-to-face meetings with senior DOE leaders about a planned reorganization that would bring nine field offices around the country under the supervision of a single, Washington-based manager. The National Treasury Employees Union [NTEU] “is requesting direct face-to-face negotiations […]

A worker lost part of his finger during routine maintenance of the Advanced Test Reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, according to a notice the Department of Energy posted online. The cause was a loop of wire the worker ran through the shaft of a drill socket, which was affixed to a handheld drill. As […]

A U.S. District Court judge on Tuesday denied the Department of Energy’s request for a delay in proceedings for South Carolina’s multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the federal agency. DOE had requested that Judge J. Michelle Childs postpone a June 30 hearing on the state’s request for summary judgment in the civil case charging DOE with failing […]

The Department of Energy and Savannah River Site held a ribbon cutting on Tuesday to formally celebrate completion of the South Carolina site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF). The facility will process the salt waste that is stored in SRS storage tanks and send the cesium and actinide portions of the waste to the site’s […]

The Department of Energy’s first open industry briefing for the estimated $1.7 billion contract that covers up to 10 years of legacy nuclear cleanup work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) drew a crowd of nearly 150 earlier this month, but the partners for incumbent Los Alamos National Security (LANS) kept a low profile, […]

Electrical work still tops a list of construction-related concerns at the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) contractor Bechtel National is building at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, according to a Friday report from the agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA). “Electrical construction weaknesses were identified with completed wiring installations that did not […]

Despite a few hiccups, workers at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., are generally adhering well to stricter maintenance procedures and requirements established after the 2014 accidents that have kept the nation’s only transuranic waste-disposal facility closed for more than two years, according to a report the Energy Department’s Office of Enterprise […]

The Department of Energy has completed only five of the 13 steps in a complex-wide emergency preparedness implementation plan the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board recommended the department start work on more than two years ago, according to a recently published letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The letter is the latest to be made public […]

The Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday it has at last wrapped up a review of whether the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) nuclear waste facility complied with federal environmental regulations from 2012 to 2014. The review began a few months after the February 2014 underground fire and later, unrelated radiation release that have closed WIPP to […]

Storing transuranic waste in certain containers near the border of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) campus may be riskier than site management believes, according to a report released late Friday by the Energy Department’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA). EA personnel visited the Livermore, Calif., lab’s Building 332 Plutonium Facility and Waste Storage Facility from […]

Registration is open for the ExchangeMonitor’s newly revamped Global Environmental Management Forum & Showcase, formerly the Decisionmakers’ Forum. The event, scheduled for Nov. 1-3 at the Omni Shoreham in Washington, D.C., will offer decision makers in the nuclear industry an opportunity to discuss new markets and new technologies being developed to reduce nuclear dangers and […]

The Department of Energy would do well to reduce the number of cleanup contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington state, according to the Hanford Advisory Board. It prepared advice at its June 9 meeting intended to help DOE provide the best value for taxpayers, improve workforce safety, reduce workforce stress due to contract changes, […]

The Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site continues to live up to its billing as the most dangerous and complicated cleanup at the former plutonium production facility near Richland, Wash., with a government watchdog disclosing Wednesday some close calls involving one of the plant’s radio-contaminated glove boxes. Difficulties with the facility’s last […]

Environmental regulators, the city of Oak Ridge, Tenn., and community activists have pushed the Department of Energy to explore more alternatives before choosing a definitive site for a new CERCLA landfill for disposal of hazardous and radioactive wastes generated during cleanup projects at the Oak Ridge Reservation. The department had previously put its eggs in […]

The Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant was immediately evacuated Thursday morning when a criticality alarm sounded. Hanford officials confirmed 90 minutes later that it was a false alarm related to maintenance being conducted on the alarm system that morning. The cause of the false alarm is being investigated. The alarm is designed to warn workers […]

Two more workers were checked for possible exposure to chemical vapors at the Hanford Site in Washington state this week, bringing the total in recent months to 52. The 52 workers received medical checks because they had respiratory symptoms, smelled a suspicious odor, or were in the vicinity of suspected chemical vapors. This week two […]

Once disposal resumes at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in early 2017, the Energy Department’s transuranic logjam will unclog at a rate of about five shipments per week, DOE told motor carriers earlier this month in a question and answer session about the agency’s next waste-transportation contract. “It is estimated that once shipping resumes, […]

After laying off of 123 workers in January at the Savannah River Site, Parsons, the Department of Energy facility’s salt waste contractor, laid off an additional 200 workers since February en route to completing construction of the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF). Parsons still has a multiyear plan for work at SRS and hopes to […]

A Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office assessment released Wednesday raised questions about hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs claimed by URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), the DOE cleanup manager for the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. It also cited the contractor for not performing any cost-allowability audits for subcontractor work that totaled more than […]

The tank farm contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site has launched a web page with data on chemical vapor monitoring as part of a push to make more information readily available to workers and the public, said officials with Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) on Monday. Better communication on vapors from waste in […]

The Tri-Party agencies have approved extending milestones for much of the central Hanford Site cleanup work under the Department of Energy Richland Operations Office, but not before incorporating changes in response to public comments. The Tri-Party agencies – DOE and its regulators, the Washington state Department of Ecology, and the Environmental Protection Agency – proposed […]

The mercury cleanup at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee could cost up to $3 billion, according to an estimate in a newly released Department of Energy report. The report, which is dated February 2016, focuses on the technology plans to address the extensive mercury challenges at DOE’s Oak Ridge Reservation and the Savannah […]

The Department of Energy at the Hanford Site in Washington state has notified local counties that it may be able to pay only 20 percent of the counties’ bills for payments in lieu of taxes this year. DOE signed an agreement with the three counties that include parts of Hanford — Benton, Franklin, and Grant […]

Brendan Bechtel, great-great grandson of the founder of San Francisco-based construction giant Bechtel, will replace Bill Dudley as the company’s chief executive officer effective Sept. 1, topping a list of senior-management changes on the way for one of the biggest contractors in the Department of Energy’s nuclear complex. The company announced the changes, which will go […]